


i never meant to start a fire.

by thequeenofokay



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-03-30 17:43:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3945817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequeenofokay/pseuds/thequeenofokay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>five things that happen after grant loses <strike>everything</strike> kara.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. to the finish line.

**Author's Note:**

> \+ guess who is super angry + in total denial!! it's me!! serious note though i no longer watch aos but i do plan to continue writing for karaward and rainward especially.
> 
> \+ okay so this is a five part series of kinda artsy drabbles set post finale in which i get out all my angst. after this i will completely ignore the fact that kara is... yknow... [whispers] dead. 
> 
> \+ **warning:** suicidal thoughts/death/grief/depression are referenced in most of these.
> 
> \+ title of this chapter is from lana del rey's "born to die", fic title is from "i'll be good" by jaymes young.

you love her.

you’d stitch her back together if you could. you’d stop her drowning in the mess you made.

of all the people that deserve this, you know it’s not her. it’s hydra, it’s shield, it’s everyone who has ever hurt her.

it’s you.

you deserve this over her.

you’d trade places with her in the ground in a beat of your broken heart if it meant she could live a full, happy life.

you wouldn’t mind if she fell in love with someone else. you wouldn’t mind if she never visited your grave and never thought of you again, as long as she lives long like she deserved –

and you think of her every second, she’s an ever-present weight in your chest, in your fingers when you reach for your gun.

you’d visit her every day if you could. you’d tell her how sorry you are. you’d tell her over and over again. you’d tell her how you still need that life with her, the one with the house and the plant in the windowsill. you’d tell her how lost you are without her.

you can’t go much longer, dreaming of her in a dress that should be white but drips red. you deserve the pain, and you know it. you deserve to never have a good night’s sleep, to beat your hands raw on the punching bag trying to get her face out of your head. you deserve it, but you think it might be killing you.

you don’t mind as much as you should. you said once, you were a survivor. you’ve got trouble remembering why you said that these days. you were living for something, definitely, and part of you says you might as well stick it out to the end.

but you’ve forgotten why.

it’s okay.

it’s okay. you’ll see her soon.

you have to.


	2. promise you'll remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \+ chapter title from "blue jeans" by lana del rey.
> 
> \+ **please see the previous chapter for warnings!!**

_Clyde loses Bonnie._ That’s what they were supposed to be, right? They were supposed to be together until the end. They were supposed to end together.

The thing is – he’d wanted a life with her. He’d wanted the white wedding and the house and the kids and the dog like he’d never allowed himself to want it before. But he knew what they were – _killers_. He knew they’d probably never make it that far.

He’d just always assumed they’d go together. Something big and dramatic – a gunfight, an explosion. He’d kiss her forehead and say, ‘See you on the other side.’

He never thought it would be like _this_.

His men think he’s falling apart. They don’t dare say it, not out loud, but they’d be right.

He wanted closure. He created chaos. He knows this isn’t what she would have wanted, not in a million years, but it’s too late now. He’s burned too many bridges.

He’s going to have so much apologising to do when he sees her again. He wonders if she’s going to hate him. She should.

A selfish part of him hopes she doesn’t. He wants to be with her again.

 

 

 

 

(His bed is too cold. He can’t remember how he slept before she was curled in his arms. He misses comforting her through her nightmares, stroking her hair and reminding her that they’ll _hurt_ the people who did this to her.

He still needs her there to remind him his own nightmares aren’t real.

 

 

There’s too much silence between sentences as he waits for her to speak. He keeps making her coffee by accident, and he can’t bring himself to throw it out. He still has her guns, too small for his own hands, that he doesn’t know what to do with. He feels like she’s _haunting_ him, ever present in his life but just out of reach.)

 

 

 

 

They have joined the list of history’s tragedies. No one will remember them.


	3. the weight of a war

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \+ i'm sorry this is sad. also this is weird so i'm sorry about that too. bear with me.
> 
> \+ title from "end of the affair" by ben howard.

It takes him a while to assign you as his right hand man. Even then, you still feel like he’s put something between your positions, like he’s waiting for someone else to come stand beside him. There always seems to be something _missing_ with him.

There’s something wrong about him. Something past anger, like there’s fissures running through him too deep to be mended.

Some of the other men say there was a girl.

They say he lost her.

They say his war against Shield is because it was _their fault_ she’s dead. They say he’ll do anything to bring them down.

They say – quietly – that he doesn’t care what it costs him. They don’t say, but they all know, that what makes him so dangerous is that he has nothing left to lose. Some of them, you know, fear he’s just taking you to hell with him.

You weren’t sure you believed them. He’s always seemed to rough and hard and _cold_ to end up like this because of a girl. He was too much of a battle-worn survivor. You ask him once, anyway, after he’s had more to drink than usual.

He laughs, like glass breaking, and places a photo down on the table. It’s worn around the edges from a long time in and out of a pocket, from fingers constantly clinging to it.

You don’t know what to say, exactly.

‘This,’ you settle on, ‘this chaos is for her?’

‘Closure,’ he corrects you.

You wait, for him to say something more. Finally, he adds. ‘Once they’ve been hurt like we were hurt – then it’s over.’

You’re not sure how to respond to that. You’re not sure you want to know _what_ exactly will be over. You’re not sure how you feel about the knowledge that Hydra really is just a personal vendetta for a ruined man with a dead girlfriend now.


	4. the world's about to end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \+ title from "lean" by the national.

Their new house is nowhere near finished—most of the rooms are still undecorated and it’s still sparsely furnished. But it’s _theirs_ , so they stay in it anyway.

They drive to the nearest supermarket and stock up. They probably don’t need so many boxes of cereal or packs of biscuits in the shapes of animals, but it’s been so long since Kara lived properly in a house she doesn’t exactly remember what they _do_ need. When they’ve got everything unpacked into the kitchen their fridge is overflowing.

And somehow there was a pack of dog biscuits in one bag, but neither claims to know how it got there. Maybe it’s a sign.

They cook their own dinner, and it’s huge and rich and far too much for them to finish. They eat sitting on the veranda in the evening sun, Kara leaning against Grant.

She doesn’t remember the last time she felt so at ease. There’s something comfortable and secure about their house. As long as they stay here, they’ll be safe.

Grant wraps his arms around her, pulling her close, when she starts to shiver as the sun sets. She’d suggest they go inside, but there’s something about the moment that she doesn’t want to break.

She can feel him watching her as she watches the sky.

‘I know we haven’t been together long,’ he says slowly, and then stops.

She doesn’t try to hurry him. She doesn’t need to—here, she’s sure, they have all the time in the world.

He shifts her slightly in his arms, and she can feel a slight tension in him.

‘I need you to know, Kara,’ he says, still slow and hesitant like he’s struggling to get the words out, ‘I need you to know how important you’ve been too me.’ There’s something in his voice she’s not sure she likes—it’s that quiet, urgent fear that he tries to hide.

Like he worries about how long he’s got left to tell her this.

(She’s not stupid. She knows that what feels like half the world would like to see their heads on a spike. She knows they will not be safe forever. They’re not that lucky.)

‘I know,’ she says. ‘It’s okay.’

‘I love you,’ he says, quieter. ‘You don’t have to say anything. I just needed you to know.’

She leans into him. The closeness is a comfort she can’t imagine living without these days.

* *

He’s holding her, and she can still hear his voice, even though he’d fading now, but if this is the last thing she hears, the last thing she sees—


	5. just take me home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \+ title from "milk teeth" by keaton henson.

              _six things to do before you die_

**i.**

He goes to her funeral. He’s not sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this. It wasn’t people asking how he knew her, and when he says “I loved her”, with the words sticking in his throat, he didn’t expect the sympathy in their expressions.

He doesn’t deserve their consolations. It’s his _fault_ she’s gone. He takes them anyway.

He meets her mother, and she reminds him of Kara in a way that makes him break a little more inside. ‘You were the boy she told me about,’ she says, with a smile that’s all at once bright and terribly, terribly sad. ‘She said you saved her.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

**ii.**

He sits at the kitchen table in Kara’s family home. He listens quietly as her mother tells him of the dedicated girl, so brave and good her whole life.

‘You must be a good man too,’ she says, ‘if she loved you.’

He doesn’t have the heart to correct her. He swallows the sting and gently lets her continue to reminisce. He holds her hand when she begins to cry. His mind wanders to the things he will never know about Kara; he aches for the multitude of stories she could have told him if they’d had the chance to grow old together.

He helps sort through the things Kara left behind. The sweatshirt for the hockey team she played for in high school. The acceptance letter to Shield’s Academy. The album of pictures taken on holiday with her family. Every reminder of her burns his fingers where he touches them, but this is the only physical, tangible proof of her that he has left.

**iii.**

He buys the plot next to hers in the graveyard. It feels morbid, when he hands over the money, but there’s nowhere else to bury him when he finally goes. He doesn’t belong in a Shield graveyard any longer, or in his family’s plot in Massachusetts. He only wants to be next to her.

**iv.**

He makes sure that all the money he’s saved over the years, spread between dozens of bank accounts, will go to her family. It was supposed to go towards them starting a life together, but now he’s got no one else to give it to.

**v.**

He goes back to their house in Mexico for the last time. They never finished it. They never had the chance to live in it together.

He can see the ghosts of the life they _should_ have had. Kara is making pancakes in the kitchen, the sweet smell wafting through the house. He can see the dog they would have had waiting expectantly at her feet. It doesn't go away when he closes his eyes; he can still here her laughing, shooing the dog away as it paws at her leg.

The bright, shining yellow sunflowers he bought for her have wilted and rotted and died in a vase on the coffee table. He should have known something so beautiful and full of hope cannot last.

He can't bring himself to throw them out. They will decay to dust, like everything else. He leaves.

**vi.**

If he closes his eyes, he can see her. Bright and smiling and _alive_.

He closes his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> \+ [tumblr](http://karapalamas.tumblr.com/)
> 
> \+ [twitter](https://twitter.com/karapalamas)


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